No Wand? No Worries!
by Nassy Nyrolian
Summary: An honest mistake prevents Harry Potter's Hogwarts letter from ever reaching him. There's only so much of the Dursleys that Harry can take, so he leaves them and starts a new life! When Dumbledore finds him, Harry has become internationally famous with his impossible abilities and feats. Join us in Harry's experiences at Hogwarts, with the only student who doesn't need a wand.
1. The Lost Letter

A/N: I do not own Harry Potter. So, about this story: I've had this idea for a while. I'm not sure how interesting it is to you people, but if you don't like it, don't read it. If you do, however, please review! By the way, there _were _exactly twenty-four students Sorted in Harry's year. I made a list. Enjoy!

Minerva McGonagall sat in her fairly dark office, shuffling the pile of envelopes in her hand. The office was devoid of decoration, save for a Gryffindor banner by the door, and everything – down to the last piece of parchment and quill – had its place and was in it. McGonagall shunned unnecessary clutter and confusion. The stuffy heat of summer had forced her to open a window, sending the flames from her candles twisting and jerking in the wind.

"There," she muttered with satisfaction, her Scottish accent rather heavy and attesting to her exhaustion. In her hands were exactly twenty-four envelopes, and each contained a letter. Some of the letters would be received with excitement and anticipation. A few would be received with total surprise and shock.

She didn't, and really couldn't know at the time, but one would not be received at all.

Professor McGonagall was weary from a long day's work, and had much more to do. But probably the most important event of the night was completed. Just to be sure, McGonagall filed through the stack of envelopes, which she had alphabetized for efficiency, and pulled out an exceptionally special one.

_Mr. H Potter_  
_ Cupboard Under the Stairs_  
_ 4 Privet Drive_  
_ Little Whinging_  
_ Surrey_

The Transfiguration teacher shuddered slightly. She'd been there eleven years ago, when Albus had first dropped young Harry off at his cousins' doorstep. Although she understood his reasons, McGonagall hated to leave him at such a horrid place. It seemed that those despicable Muggles had hardly improved, she thought, thinking about poor Harry shoved in a cupboard under some stairs.

Holding the envelope contemplatively, McGonagall didn't hear the gusty _WHOOSH _of wind as it squeezed through her window. In an instant, the exceptionally special envelope had been plucked from her hand and pulled outside the window with the breeze.

She jumped out of her chair and fumbled for her wand, knowing that the Hogwarts Lake was directly beside her office. _"Accio envelope!" _she yelled, running to the window, thankful that her room wasn't as cluttered as the Headmaster's and there was nothing to trip over or knock down.

Something wet flopped back through her window and made a deflating sound as it landed on the floor. She hadn't been fast enough.

"Oh, Merlin," she mumbled, seeing the sopping wet, paper-ish mush on the floor. Already knowing that she had to write another one, she promptly Vanished the mess and sank back into her chair.

However, even Professor McGonagall, Transfiguration teacher, Head of Gryffindor House, was human. Long nights were not uncommon to her, but with getting everything ready for the upcoming school year she had been at least three times as busy as usual. When the second letter was finished she slipped into another envelope, and wrote out the address.

_Mr. H Potter_  
_ Cupboard Under the Stairs_  
_ 40 Privet Drive_  
_ Little Whinging_  
_ Surrey_

Her tired eyes slid right over the mistake, and wanting to get onto the next task for that evening (writing out Hogsmeade permission forms for the third-years), she walked back to the window and whistled.

A group of assorted owls swooped into her office, once again making McGonagall glad that there was nothing for them to disrupt or break. She took the letters in her arms and gave one to each owl. Harry's envelope was given to a ruby-colored Short Eared owl, with an extra instruction to 'make sure he takes and reads it.'

When all the envelopes were distributed, McGonagall waved a weary hand at the window, and the flock took off. With absolutely no inkling that her mistake was to change the course of Muggle and Wizard history, Professor McGonagall sat down at her desk, loosed a great, gusty sigh, and tiredly took out a new roll of parchment.


	2. Harry's Dilemma

A/N: I don't own Harry Potter (though I'd sure like to). Please read and review!

The Dursley household looked very ordinary from the outside – a row or properly trimmed hedges, a small flower garden out front, and a straight concrete walkway leading up to the door. It looked just like every other house on the street, just as it was meant to look. The Dursley family seemed to take pride in being ordinary. Anything that stuck so much as one toe out of the bounds of normalcy was unspeakable to them. They were the sort of people that refused to talk to their neighbors about anything besides the recent weather and politics.

Perhaps the reason that the Dursleys wanted to appear so normal is that they were harboring something inside of their house that was as far from 'normal' as possible. To be even more specific, it was in a cupboard under their stairs.

Harry Potter had long hated the fact that he lived in a cupboard. It made him feel like some sort of hobo, or even an ugly Christmas present that was shoved somewhere in the house because you couldn't toss it away for fear of offending some relative. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon wanted to feel as though Harry didn't exist in the slightest degree.

But that was enough establishing a backstory, the author decided, and instead focused her literary camera on Harry Potter himself, lying in his little cupboard. The date was August 31, and if Harry had received his Hogwarts letter, he would have been asking his Aunt and Uncle for a trip to King's Cross station and Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. As it was, Harry was asleep and dreaming about a flying motorbike – the same dream, in fact, that had gotten him in trouble on the way to the zoo a little while ago.

At once there came a sharp rapping on the cupboard door.

"Up! Up, boy!"

Harry's eyes opened. In his ears, he could still hear the deep thrumming of the motorbike's engine, and feel the wind brushing his face as he flew through the night.

"I said get _up_! Are you deaf?"

Harry sat up in bed, fumbling for his glasses. "I'm up, Aunt Petunia."

His Aunt's voice lost none of its irritated tone. "Well, hurry up! Dudley wants bacon for breakfast; you'll find it in the fridge. Get moving!"

When Harry emerged from his prison cell under the stairs, the rest of the Dursley family had congregated at the kitchen table and was awaiting their breakfast. Without a word, Harry pulled out the frying pan from the cabinets and started cooking. He could feel the eyes of the Dursleys on him as he worked. Nobody trusted him anymore. Not since the episode with the boa constrictor.

A few minutes later, Harry set down a heaping platter of bacon at the table. Aunt Petunia took two pieces. Uncle Vernon took ten. Dudley took twelve.

Harry gazed at the empty plate wistfully, but turned round and pulled out a half grapefruit from the refrigerator instead. He took his place at the end of the table, as far away from the others as physically possible. They all sat and ate in silence, interrupted only by Dudley's pig-like snortings as he scarfed his food.

_Clink_. The mail slot opened and shut, letting a small pile of papers tumble onto the front hall carpet.

Uncle Vernon grunted. "Boy. Go get the mail."

Harry took his time to eat one more spoonful of grapefruit.

A vein in Uncle Vernon's forehead bulged. "_Now_, boy."

Harry pushed out his chair and walked to the front hall, where the pile of letters rested. Harry noticed a postcard on top, and observed with some pleasure that Aunt Marge had tripped over a horseshoe crab on her holiday, spraining her ankle. He picked up the pile and looked through them as he headed back to the kitchen. Bills, advertisements, more bills...

Nope. Nothing.

He passed the mail off to Uncle Vernon, and sat down to attempt to enjoy the last of his grapefruit.

As the minutes passed, Harry began to think more of his dilemma with the cupboard. The Dursleys had neglected to give him a birthday present after the dreaded python episode at the zoo. Maybe, if he asked them nicely, he could move into Dudley's second bedroom, the one that he currently used for broken toys.

"Uncle Vernon?"

Harry looked up at his Uncle. What he saw was very odd. Uncle Vernon held the postcard from Aunt Marge in his chubby fingers, but also clutched a thick envelope, the address written out in emerald green ink. Apparently, that letter had been stuck to the back of the postcard. Vernon's face was devoid of color.

"What's that?" Harry asked, a little concerned.

"Nothing! Nothing at all!"

Before Harry could say anything more Uncle Vernon had stuffed the envelope into the toaster and turned it on. There was a fiery flare-up from within, and the smell of burnt paper seeped from the toaster.

"Dad! What was that for?" Dudley demanded, a piece of bacon hanging from his mouth. "It stinks in here now!"

Vernon smoothed out his tie. "Nothing, Dudley. A scam, that's all."

A scrap of paper floated out of the toaster. The emerald ink on it seemed to shimmer in the morning light. Vernon was busy talking to Dudley, so Harry reached out discreetly and snatched it from the air. The scrap was only as big as his pinkie finger, and scorch marks that framed the thing made it hard to read the edges, but three words sailed out:

_Mister Potter, Cupboard_

"Hey, dad, Harry's got something!" Dudley shouted suddenly.

Uncle Vernon's eyes bulged with horror as he saw what Harry was holding.

"Give that to me!" Vernon demanded, grabbing for the scrap, tearing it from Harry's fingers.

"That letter! That was addressed to me!" Harry shouted, suddenly realizing what his Uncle had done.

Vernon dropped the scrap back into the toaster and incinerated it as well. "So what if it is? It's none of your business, none of _our _business."

"What do you _mean_, none of my business?" Harry asked, standing up in outrage. "It was _addressed_ to me!"

Uncle Vernon stood up as well, his chair scraping against the ground. "_Any more questions, boy, and I'll lock you in your cupboard_!"

It might have been silent to Aunt Petunia and Dudley, but to Harry, the blood pounding in his ears was deafening. He eyed Uncle Vernon with absolutely no attempt to conceal his anger. Nobody had ever written to him before. Why would they? Except for teachers at school, the Dursleys made every attempt to keep Harry a secret. The fact that they knew his name, that they knew he lived in a _cupboard_... That letter had been something special. Harry continued to stare at his Uncle with contempt, the two of them engaged in a silent standoff.

Eventually, under Vernon's red, wide-eyed glare, Harry subsided and took his seat again.

Vernon grunted. "Mind your place, boy," he told Harry.

Blood was still beating in Harry's head like a war drum. All his life had been about catering to the Dursleys' whim, and with no end in sight, Harry's tolerance was fading fast. In the near future a breaking point loomed, a line of angry storm clouds that would send the Dursleys running (or at least, this is what Harry always imagined for himself).

As Uncle Vernon returned to idle talk with Aunt Petunia about their electricity bill, and reminding Dudley that ten hours of video games each day drained their pockets, Harry sat angrily in his chair. Privately, he imagined something dreadful happening to the Dursleys – nothing dangerous, just something to put them in their place. After all, he was a human being, too. All this anger lodged inside of him was yearning to burst free.

Harry sat back and savored the thought of the before-mentioned dreadful thing happening for a while. Uncle Vernon was paying Harry no attention, so he humored himself and stared at the toaster, willing it to explode or something.

A few moments passed, and nothing happening. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Harry sat back and was about to look away when – a piece of his burned letter appeared above the toaster, _and began to float upwards_. Amazed, Harry watched the charred scrap of paper, wondering if some warm current was lifting it into the air. More scraps drifted up into the air and fell upwards, like Jane and Michael Banks's letter from _Mary Poppins_. Before his eyes they drifted and swirled and congregated, and Harry saw the pieces form a thin, ropy body with a head at the very front...

In accordance with the rules of perfect timing, Uncle Vernon chose this moment to turn round and address Harry.

" – you of course, boy, will need to step up on – "

Dangling in front of him, in thin air, was a snake. Formed from the seared scraps of Harry's letter, with two pieces that still burned with ruby fire for eyes, it was a terrifying sight. The snake hissed at Vernon and sprang forwards.

Uncle Vernon screamed and fell out of his chair. The snake sailed overhead and landed on a kitchen cabinet, black ash scattering as it landed. With a sharp squeal, Aunt Petunia stood up and grabbed Dudley protectively, looking horrified.

The fiery snake hissed at Uncle Vernon again and jumped at him. Uncle Vernon didn't have time to turn around and face it, so the snake opened its jaws, revealing two fangs, made of fire. It struck Vernon on his rear, landed on the floor, hissed one last time... and was gone. The blackened paper simply collapsed on the kitchen floor as if nothing had happened.

Harry sat, glued to his seat with shock and gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles. Vernon pushed himself up from the floor (no easy task for a man of his size) and regarded Harry with a newfound fright. He lifted a trembling hand, pointed his finger at Harry, and would have probably screamed at him if he hadn't realized that his backside was on fire.

"FIRE!" Vernon roared, suddenly smelling the smoke coming from the seat of his pants. "FIRE! FIRE! HE'S SET ME ON FIRE!" Harry's uncle began to dance around the kitchen, trying to put it out.

"Vernon!" Aunt Petunia ran to the kitchen table and grabbed a pot of flowers. "Vernon, sweetums!" she wailed. "Here!"

Petunia sloshed the water from the flowers over the fire. One last great puff of smoke rose from Vernon's pants, and then all was still.

It was one of the funniest things that Harry had ever seen, watching his Uncle Vernon jump around the kitchen in panic. But at the time Harry was far too scared and dumbfounded to laugh. All that he could do was stare at the little pile of soot on the floor, lying there as innocently as if the toaster had dumped it there.

Vernon's face was deep purple now. His shoes wet shoes squelching, Uncle Vernon pointed at Harry's cupboard.

"_CUPBOARD! NOW_!"

Harry fled to his cupboard under the stairs and shut it. Through the wall he could hear the muffled but unmistakably frightened voices of the Dursleys.

_"How did he do that, Dad? How did he do it?"_

_ "He's dangerous, Dudley. He's not one of us. Blasted little ingrate, and here _we_ are! Forced to take him in when he's a sure criminal, mark my words..."_

_ "Oh, Vernon, what are we going to do? For eleven years we've tried to straighten him out, but he's still a freak! Just like _she _was." _

Harry lay for a while in his dark cupboard, listening to them. What did they mean by 'freak?'" By 'not one of us?'" He was just as normal as everybody else.

Then again, not everybody could make a burning snake appear from a toaster.

So many odd things had happened in Harry's life. Up until now, all of them could have been loosely explained or were insignificant enough to ignore. That time that Harry was trying to jump behind garbage cans to hide from Dudley's gang and ended up on the roof, the wind had probably caught him. When Aunt Petunia tried to force him into an ugly sweater, the sweater had seemed to become too small for even a hand puppet. The python incident at the zoo had been unnerving. _This _was simply flabbergasting. Nothing could be explained. Nothing could be ignored.

Harry turned the day's happenings over and over in his mind, as one would toss a coin up in the air and tally the heads and tails, trying to discern a pattern. The afternoon passed, and so did most of the evening, when Harry finally dared to venture out beyond his cupboard again.

He found the Dursleys in the living room, watching television on their sofa. He entered mutely and sat in a hard wooden chair in the corner, the Dursleys obviously trying to ignore his presence. For a half hour both parties sat there, the news anchors blathering on quietly about weather and politics in the background.

At last, Harry could stand it no more.

"What d'you mean, that I'm not one of you?" he asked loudly.

Vernon's head twitched, and Aunt Petunia coughed, but they said nothing.

"Come on!" Harry stood up and walked next to their sofa. "You're always talking about me like I'm a freak, like I'm not human, and I want to know why! I hear you, every day, saying stuff like that. Tell me why!"

"You're not normal," Aunt Petunia said, her thin lips barely parting. "You're not right."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Harry demanded, his voice rising in anger. "I'm not _right_?"

Uncle Vernon turned to Harry. "Sit down, _boy,_ and be quiet!"

But Harry would not be quiet.

"_What is that supposed to mean_?" Harry shouted.

Aunt Petunia stood up and faced him. "YOU'RE NOT _RIGHT_! You're a FREAK! YOUR KIND does not BELONG!"

"AND WHAT, EXACTLY, _IS _MY KIND?"

"_Your_ kind! Your kind, that can do these stupid little _tricks_!" Aunt Petunia cursed, her voice louder than Harry had ever heard it, rent with anger and grief. "Like your stupid _mother_! Running around, making things blow up, and getting _praised _for it! Praised for being... being _UNNATURAL!"_

Harry's face reddened, and he took a step closer to his Aunt, with her eyes bulging in rage.

"My Mum could do these things? So that's why you call HER a freak, too?"

"And she was!" Aunt Petunia screamed. "A freak! All of her kind are freaks!"

"What is HER KIND?"

"YOUR MOTHER," Aunt Petunia screeched, "WAS A WITCH!"

Harry had no idea that his Aunt Petunia was telling the truth. How could he? He had never heard of witches and wizards, except in fairy tales and video games that Dudley played. He thought it was just another insult, as any other Muggle would have. With the happenings of that morning, and now the insults to him and the parents he never knew, it all drove him to the end of his forbearance for this family, for this _life. _Something inside of Harry Potter snapped.

"That's it," Harry said, and he wasn't yelling anymore. Now he spoke with a new, calm resolve.

"I'm leaving."

"What?" Uncle Vernon asked, a dare for him to repeat the words.

Harry glowered at the greedy, stupid family before him. "I'm leaving. You heard me."

Vernon laughed gleefully. "Ah, you're _leaving_! Just where, _boy_, are you planning to go?" He leaned back into the sofa leisurely, sure that Harry's little tantrum was already ended.

"I don't care!" Harry yelled. "Just away from here, away from YOU LOT!"

Harry ran from the living room to his cupboard. He grabbed his backpack, all packed for Stonewall High the next day, and dumped his folders and textbooks onto the floor.

Thumping footsteps told him that Uncle Vernon was coming from the living room. Harry quickly shoved his clothes and few possessions into the pack and swung it onto his shoulder.

Vernon appeared around the corner. "Pick up this mess!" he commanded. "You're staying with us, and you're going to Stonewall High tomorrow!"

"Over your dead body!" Harry said fiercely, and made for the door, only to be stopped by his Uncle.

"You're staying here, whether you like it or not!"

"Why?" Harry asked, trying to get around Uncle Vernon's considerable bulk. "It's obvious that you all hate me! You should be glad that I'm leaving!"

"We were told," Vernon grunted, stepping to the side to block Harry again, "to keep you by another one of _your_ kind! No doubt they'll turn us into frogs if they find out you're gone!"

"Yeah, witches, right!" Harry tried to push Vernon out of the way, but his Uncle was heavy.

"GET INTO YOUR CUPBOARD!"

"NO!"

Harry thrust out his hand into the air towards Vernon, who immediately flew backwards as if he had been charged by an invisible rhinoceros. Harry didn't know how he did it. He didn't _care _anymore. All he knew was that he needed to get out of there, away from this horrid family.

"I'm sick of you!" Harry shouted, walking past Vernon and towards the front door. "I'm sick of _all _of you! I'm sick of being insulted every day. I'm sick of _living in a bloody cupboard! _I'm getting out of here!"

The door opened on its own as Harry approached.

"Have a nice life!" Harry added for emphasis, stepping onto the front step. He pointed at the door and it slammed shut.

For a few minutes, Harry stood on the Dursley's front porch, the very same place where he had been left a little more than eleven years ago. He listened intently for movement from inside the house, but he could hear none. Harry turned around, away from the door, and looked out upon the street. The same lights still flickered feebly through faded plastic, suspended on metal poles. Up and down the street were quiet houses just like his. It truly did look like that night when Dumbledore and Hagrid had dropped him off, though Harry didn't know that. Tonight, however, this place was different – it was not the beginning of a torturous imprisonment, but rather it marked the end. Harry closed his eyes and felt the cool night air wrap around him.

He was free.


End file.
